


Curiosity's Eyes

by StrongerThanAnySword



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: After the battle, Before the Dawn, Flashbacks, Gen, Guilt, Memories, Other, Past Injuries, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, Unsettling, Well - Freeform, discomfort, kind of, painful memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6103335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrongerThanAnySword/pseuds/StrongerThanAnySword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The leaders of the Battle of the Five Armies gather after the battle to discuss the next day, the divvying of the treasure, and all other pressing matters, but Thranduil can't quite concentrate; one curious little Hobbit won't stop staring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curiosity's Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was actually inspired by a gorgeous fan art of Thranduil by nevui-penim-miruvorrr on tumblr! You can find it here: http://nevui-penim-miruvorrr.tumblr.com/post/125978812286

The hobbit kept looking at him.

Thranduil pretended not to notice, tried to focus on the discussion currently happening in his tent.  The bowman, still carrying the scent of dragon's flame which sent a chill racing down Thranduil's back, his weary features framed by the scarlet silk behind him, his dark eyes barely staying open as they discussed what happened next.  The wizard, his face gray and grim with the quiet eyes which saw everything, no matter how well they were hidden, focused on Dain of the Iron Hills and the bowman, following an intense and insistent discussion...but  _confound_ him, he couldn't even pretend to listen to or look at Dain Ironfoot, the small brazen Dwarf-Lord, not with the burning gaze of the bright-eyed, sad-mouthed hobbit fixed on his face without blinking!

Just when Thranduil thought he would snap from the tension, jerk to his feet and demand what the hafling wanted, Gandalf sighed, falling against the back of his chair, the tension in his body going slack.

"It is early," he said wearily, nodding toward the dim not-quite-darkness outside, the dawn betrayed in the grim darkness a by a slight lightning behind the hills.

"So it is," Dain grunted, climbing to his feet and groaning.  "I'd better retire to my tent afore I have a hundred or more knocking it down to wake me up...there are plans to be made," he added sadly, and Thranduil felt a slight pain in his heart, his face relaxing into a sadness for just a moment.  Dain had lost much of his family, an entire line...Thranduil knew how that felt.

Bard clapped a gentle hand to Dain's shoulder, nodding.  "I too should return to my camp to rest before the day begins."  He gave a slight nod to Thranduil, then to each of the others in turn, before turning and ducking out of the tent.  Dain grunted and gave a bow before following; Thranduil noticed that it was not  _quite_ as low as it might have been, but said nothing.  

"I suppose I must go as well," Gandalf said, his voice a soft rumble as always.  His too-keen eyes were on Thranduil now, but he refused to back down or away from the wizard, nodding in agreement instead.

"I will enjoy the brief respite," the Elven king agreed, "for I know what activities the day will bring, and I am not overexcited to meet them."  He sighed and searched for words--he wanted to say something, anything, something that conveyed the depth and weight of his feelings, but there were no words at all.  Instead, he crossed to the table and looked down at the map spread there, dismissing the wizard without a further word.  He heard Gandalf scoff softly but knew there was no malice in it, merely waiting until the elder had left the tent before closing his eyes and rolling his head around his shoulders, trying to work a knot out of his neck that had been there since perhaps the fourth hour of battle.

"Ahem."

 Thranduil looked up with a frown toward the noise, his face drawing even more tightly closed when he saw who it was.

The hobbit was standing there, watching him.

Thranduil would have snapped at him, would have demanded what the small creature wanted, would have ordered him from the tent, and yet...the creature standing before him, though small, had risked life and limb in an intensely intimate fashion, and through his efforts, much bloodshed had been prevented.  The look in his tear-reddened eyes reminded Thranduil that he had also lost much that was dear to him, and Thranuil felt his heart soften.  He would hear what it was the halfling wanted to say.

"What would you say to me?" Thranduil asked, picking up his wine glass and draining it to the dregs.  He sat down wearily, something he had not let himself do for a good portion of the meeting, and gestured for the hobbit--Bilbo--to do the same in a seat across from him.  Bilbo hurried to obey.

"I, erm..." He fidgeted in his seat and swallowed, looking around the tent, clearly tense.  Thranduil prepared himself for anything and everything--questions about the Dwarves, a flurry of hatred for his treatment of them, questions about his son, anything he might say--but he was not prepared for what came out of the hobbit's mouth.

"What happened to your face?"  The halfling blushed to the tips of his ears when he finally made eye contact with Thranduil, but Thranduil didn't see.  His breath was grinding to a halt in his chest.  His vision was clouding over.  His ears were ringing.  The world swayed even as he gripped the seat of his chair with one hand, the other flying to his face, to the injury that the other couldn't possibly have seen.

_shouting--_

"What do you mean," Thranduil gritted through his teeth, struggling not to let out the scream building in his constricted chest.  "What do you mean by that question."

_\--the clash of sword against steel--_

"I-I-I, ahm..." the hobbit began to stutter and mumble something fierce, looking down at his curly-haired toes and hunching his shoulders.  "Th-that is, your Majesty, I only wondered ab-bout your injuries..."

"They are scratches, nothing more."  Thranduil slipped into the half-truth smoothly.  The injuries visible to the others were mere tokens, and they stung from sweat and dirt but they were not serious.  "They will heal within two days at most."

"N-not those."  Bilbo seemed to swallow his anxiety, and Thranduil could almost read it on his face:  _in for a penny..._  "The injury on the side, your Highness.  The one..."  He gestured vaguely to his own face, but Thranduil flinched just the same, his arm suddenly too heavy to hold up any longer; his fingertips dragged down his mottled face before his whole hand dropped into his lap, slack.  He stared down at the hafling before him in mute horror.

_\--a deafening roar, shaking the skies--_

"It is not possible for you to know of this," he said softly, feeling as if a troll was squeezing him, crushing him between its hands.  "Who told you?  Who was it?"  He stood abruptly, his chair falling over, and he sucked in a painful breath.  "WHO WAS IT?!"

_\--DRAGON FIRE--_

Bilbo squeaked and curled further down into his chair, trembling at the fury radiating from Thranduil's eyes.  "N-no-one told me, your Majesty!  N-no-one at all!"

"It is not possible for you to see through my glamour!" Thranduil snapped, taking a step forward.  "I have shielded it for countless years against Men, Elves, and Dwarves!"  Panic suddenly drove into his mind like a spear; had he forgotten to put the glamour back up after his encounter with Oakenshield in the throne room?  His heart twinged slightly at the memory of Thorin, but he shed the thought with a shake of the head, not unlike a bull's.  "How can you have seen what no other has, save a few?!"

_\--BURNING--_

"P-perhaps..."  Bilbo licked his lips and dared to look up, cringing slightly when his eyes found Thranduil's face.  "H-have you met a Hobbit before?"

Thranduil jerked his head like a stallion rearing, eyes wide, frozen in time yet suddenly, blissfully disconnected from the screaming in his head.  His mouth frowned deeply at the creature before him, thinking hard at this new question, wondering what the hobbit was getting at.  "Not to my memory.  Certainly not before..."  The words choked off in his chest.

Bilbo nodded, seeming grim as he straightened up a little.  "Before you were injured?"

_\--SCREAMING--_

"Y-."  The word choked off in Thranduil's throat.

**_FATHER--_ **

Thranduil cleared his throat and wished desperately for more wine.  "Yes."

"Could it be...might it be possible that because you have never met a Hobbit, you would not know how to fool our eyes?"  Bilbo's eyes were watching him carefully, as if he was ready to jump up and catch Thranduil mid-swoon, and the thought was so ridiculous that Thranduil's lips twitched into a brief smile.

"That could indeed be the case," he admitted, slowly righting his chair and sitting down again, feeling cold all of a sudden.  His eyes stared through Bilbo, to another time, another land, war-torn and terrible...he shuddered and struggled to keep his face composed.  "Indeed, I think it is most likely..."

Bilbo stood suddenly and moved to his side, looking upset.  "I'm sorry," he said, looking wretched.  "Really, I am, I didn't mean to upset you in the slightest...stupid, asking such a personal question like that, entirely my fault..."  Thranduil forced a smile.

"You ought not ask questions of such a nature," he agreed in a murmur, "but the curiosity is understandable.  Suffice to say that the battles were terrible when I met and fought dragons of my own, in a time before your grandfather's grandfathers were even a notion in their parent's minds.  I hope," Thranduil added suddenly, "that you do not think me...cruel in my dealings with your friends."  His hands curled on his knees, fisting the silky material of his outer cloak.  "I was loath to face a dragon again, and my cowardice cost many quite dearly."

"Well," Bilbo said, shuffling on his feet, "I am sure you didn't mean any harm."  His own eyes looked suspiciously wet and he looked down and away.  "It is really not all your fault, not in the end, not at all, and I do hope you know that.  I'm sure I haven't made all the right choices in this venture..."  His curly hair shook as he took a shuddering breath.  "But I have made those which seemed the most right at the time, and I trust you have done the same."  Bilbo peeked up at Thranduil's face and whatever he saw there caused a small, wordless sound to come from his lips.  A moment later, the hobbit was  _hugging_   _him,_ and Thranduil froze under the contact for just a moment, a tear tracing down his cheek.

Bilbo cried onto Thranduil's chest.  The tears, instead of irritating him or causing him to pull away, seemed to quench the burning there, and the Elven king closed his eyes.  His hands slowly lifted, drawing his arms around the hobbit's small form, and for the first time in many hundreds of years, he allowed himself to remember properly--remember the grief that crushed him, the guilt that sat deep in his own skin, and if he bowed his head to the hobbit's hair and breathed in the scent of his curls and shed a few tears of his own, neither of them ever said a word about it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thranduil, in canon, follows Oropher into the War of the Last Alliance. However, in order to take Thranduil's line in _The Desolation of Smaug_ into account, I have made some slight alterations to the WotLA.
> 
> In the Battle of Dagorlad, it is revealed that there are yet living dragons who will follow Morgoth's forces into battle, and this is where Thranduil encounters dragon-fire, while attempting to reach his father who had charged so brashly into the heart of the battle. He, of course, does not make it in time, and his father's body is never recovered; Oropher's becomes one of those souls who haunt the Dead Marshes (which are seen in TTT film), and the memories pain Thranduil forever after that. Thranduil escaped with his life thanks to the healing arts of Elrond of Rivendell, but carries the scars which even Elrond could not repair. They run soul-deep, and Thranduil hides them, both ashamed to be marked as different, less beautiful than his fellow Elves, and horrified at the memories that they conjure.


End file.
